This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

The editorial states:Amid an outcry that the state and the MTA have given Forest City Ratner a sweetheart deal to keep alive its Atlantic Yards project, it's time to recall how this scheme originated and why it has such steadfast backing from responsible city and state officials. For those who are optimistic about the city's prospects, Atlantic Yards is crucial for realizing New York's potential.

The editorial continues:It all began with a phone call from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz to Forest City's Bruce Ratner. “You have to buy the New Jersey Nets and move them to Brooklyn,'' said Mr. Markowitz. He argued that Brooklyn needed a professional sports team for the prestige it would bring and the economic benefits that would result.

At the time, Mr. Ratner admits, he was clueless about professional basketball, both on the court and as a business. Yet he was the go-to person for Mr. Markowitz because he was the driving force behind the construction of the MetroTech office complex in downtown Brooklyn in the 1980s. It is not an exaggeration to say that MetroTech saved the borough's economy.

The creation myth is a tad disingenuous. Remember that Chuck Ratner, CEO of parent Forest City Enterprises, called the land "a great piece of real estate" and said:I will confess that it was less than two or three years ago we were sitting around in New York wondering where the next deals were going to come from. We had finished a whole bunch of office and we completed MetroTech and we didn't have the next great site in Brooklyn. That was one of the reasons we got so aggressive and creative, Bruce and his team did in this Atlantic Yards project. We saw that land sitting there for this last 10 years, realizing it would be a great opportunity if somebody could turn it on. We hope we've found a way to do that.

Mostly a rail yard?

The editorial continues:Mr. Ratner was intrigued by the borough president's plea because it fit with his belief that the Atlantic Yards area, consisting mostly of a rail yard, was the perfect place to continue Brooklyn's revival. The infrastructure costs for building on the site were simply too high for a private company to assume. Only if Mr. Ratner could find a public benefit to justify the public dollars required would development be possible. The basketball team provided that, just as new baseball stadiums did in the Bronx and Queens.

Less than 40% of the 22-acre site consists of a rail yard. The basketball arena has hardly been touted as the main public benefit; the main benefit was "affordable housing," plus open space, transportation improvements, and the removal of blight--all of which are in question.

If the infrastructure costs were simply too high for a private company, why didn't the city and state invest in a platform, then bid out the property?

Best location for density?

The editorial continues:The city has been in Mr. Ratner's corner because, if you believe the mayor that a thriving New York will attract 900,000 new residents in the coming decades, the transit hub at Atlantic Yards makes it the best location to build a new residential neighborhood with Manhattan-like density. All those new New Yorkers will need someplace to live.

Well, yes and no. There's surely an argument for increased density, and the UNITY Plan proposes significant density, as well. Much of the AY site is well beyond the transit hub and in fact closer to other subway stops.

The "Manhattan-like density" of the project, at least as approved, would be "extreme density." There are other ways to accommodate density, through a development-oriented transit and a better process.

Delays

The editorial continues:Nothing has changed in that equation since Mr. Markowitz's phone call, but everything else has changed in the world of development and finance. Gone is the soaring design of world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, delayed for who knows how long is the completion of the entire project, and scaled back is the amount Forest City will pay the MTA.

So Crain's, unlike government officials, acknowledges that the project's completion and thus benefits would be delayed.

Crain's does not, however, follow the AY-supporting Regional Plan Association (RPA) in suggesting that maybe the MTA could've asked for a bit of the upside in exchange for the concessions it offered.

FCR's "black hole"

The editorial continues:It is worth noting that while Forest City may wind up with a bonanza, up to now it has been a black hole. Stuck in New Jersey, the Nets lose around $20 million a year. Architecture and legal fees for the project total more tens of millions. Delays have been interminable.

Are taxpayers supposed to bail out Forest City for its business risks? If architecture and legal fees total more tens of millions, subsidies--$305 millions in direct subsidies, and hundreds of millions more in indirect ones--dwarf them.

No bonds, no project?

The editorial continues:Time is running short. Mr. Ratner must sell bonds for the project and break ground soon after, or the project will have to be abandoned.

Ratner must have bonds sold for the arena, not the project, before an end-of-the-year deadline to get $100 million-plus in federal subsidies. Last year, a company spokesman told the New York Daily News that they would build the arena even without tax-exempt bonds.

It's all a bet

The editorial closes:New York can continue to support Atlantic Yards, realize what is economically possible now and bet that the entire project can be built in the future. Or it can abandon Mr. Ratner and the project, in which case it is certain that Atlantic Yards will remain an open sore for decades to come.

Why does Crain's, tribune of the business community, not endorse free market practices--an appraisal, an effort to seek new bidders--but rather embrace a "market of one"? Why does Crain's not even endorse the RPA's desire to harness the upside?

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

The bi-monthly Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Community Update meeting June 14, held at 55 Hanson Place, addressed multiple issues, including delays in the project, a new detente with project neighbors,concerns about traffic congestion, upcoming sewer work and demolitions, and an explanation of how high winds caused debris to fly off the under-construction 38 Sixth Avenue building. I'll have more coverage.
Security issues came up several times at the meeting.
Wayne Bailey, a resident who regularly takes photos and videos (that I often use) of construction/operations issues that impact residents, asked representatives of Tishman Construction if the security guard at the sites they're building works for them.
After Tishman Senior VP Eric Reid said yes, Bailey asked why a guard told him not to shoot video of the site, even though he was on a public street.

"I will address it with principals for that security firm," Reid said.
Forest City Ratner executive Ashley Cotton, the …

This graphic, posted in November 2017, is post-dated to stay at the top of the blog. It will be updated as announced configurations change and buildings launch. Note the unbuilt B1 and the proposed shift in bulk to the unbuilt Site 5.

The August 2014 tentative configurations proposed by developer Greenland Forest City Partners will change. The project is already well behind that tentative timetable.

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …